ALERT member Priya Davidar takes aim at experts who are claiming that wildlife populations -- such as elephants, tigers, rhinos, and lions -- are now increasing in India.

In a novel by Voltaire, Candide, the young hero, is mentored by Dr Pangloss, an incessant optimist. Pangloss's mantra was: “All is best in the best of all possible worlds”.

In an article in the Hindustan Times, Dr. Raman Sukumar from the Indian Institute of Science came out with a Planglossian view of Indian nature conservation:

“We have observed a sharp increase in the number of elephants — from 15,000 in 1982 to 30,000 in 2016. Even the population of tigers, rhinoceros and lions is on the rise. However, considering severe climate change, the government needs a landscaping approach for wildlife rather than a protected area approach”.

The Asiatic lion is one of the world's rarest cats, with only about 500 individuals alive today.

It is clear to all conservationists that the “rise” of the population of tigers, rhinos, and lions is an extremely fragile trend (for example, see ALERT reports here, here, here, and here), especially when there are myriad infrastructure projects imperiling India's protected areas.

Big Questions about Elephants

But what about the “sharp increase” in the elephant population?

Nobody really knew what the Asian elephant population in India was in 1982. As late as 2004, leading elephant researchers Stephen Blake and Simon Hedges were saying “It is not possible to estimate the total elephant population of India or to compare population numbers among sites. Totals cited for India should therefore be regarded as educated guesses.”

My personal observations lead me to believe that there were more elephants in the 1980s than exist today and their habitat was definitely bigger and better connected.

In 2003, Dr. Sukumar made a “guesstimate” that there were 28,580 elephants in India. However, if the population had indeed doubled from 15,000 elephants in 1982 to 30,000 elephants in 2016, then the population should have been around 23,000 elephants in 2003.

Whether the 2003 “guesstimate” was an overestimation, or whether the suggested population growth rate of around 2 percent per year is an overestimation, we play with huge uncertainties that make sweeping statements dangerous.

In a model used by Dr. Sukumar in the 1980s and later, it was assumed that elephant populations had reached their maximum numbers in different Indian reserves -- the reserves were effectively saturated with elephants and could sustain no more individuals. But if this were so, then the only way the Indian elephant population could have doubled is if their available habitat had doubled.

And that simply hasn't happened. In the last few decades, the status of Indian protected areas has changed, but there was certainly no significant increase in elephant habitat.

Indeed, human pressures on India's environments have increased sharply in recent decades. The human population doubled between 1981 and 2011 and the country’s Gross Domestic Product has quadrupled since the 1970s. Both trends have accelerated the conversion of ecosystems for agriculture and the loss of native forests.

Humans are increasingly encroaching into critical habitats for species like this Indian rhinoceros.

Human-Elephant Conflicts

In recent years, the number of conflicts between elephants and people has clearly increased. Some have argued that this means we must now have more elephants -- and that elephants should therefore be culled, rather than protected.

But there is a far more likely explanation. There are a lot more humans now, and they are increasingly encroaching into elephant habitats. A 2003 study concluded that “many of India’s elephants occur in highly fragmented habitats, in close proximity to sizeable human populations, and in areas with well-developed transportation networks”.

And this state of affairs is only getting worse over time because of unabated human population growth and growing development pressures.

Protected Areas are Crucial

We agree with Dr. Sukumar that a landscape approach to conservation is needed, but it has to be grounded within a protected-area framework to improve the long-term viability of our endangered megafauna. Even in the best possible scenario, a landscape approach in itself has not worked in India, and a real-life demonstration is badly needed.

Dr. Sukumar's suggestion of a “landscape approach for wildlife rather than a protected-area approach” would enable protected areas to be dismantled, replacing them with a dubious and unproven scheme -- a scheme that might seal the fate of several of India’s most endangered species, including the Asian elephant and tiger.

I believe excessive optimism is dangerous. On the contrary, we must recognize the serious scientific uncertainties we are facing -- and therefore take a precautionary approach to ensure the long-term survival of our iconic wildlife.

ALERT member Priya Davidar, a leading Indian ecologist, tells us about growing threats to India's protected areas and the imperiled wildlife they harbor:

Shrinking refuges for Asian Elephants.

Terrestrial protected areas constitute less than 4.9 percent of the geographical area of India and harbor many endangered species. These reserves suffer severe fragmentation and a variety of diffuse human-related disturbances.

For example, the survival of the Asian elephant and the Bengal tiger in India hangs by a thread because they are increasingly confined to small isolated protected areas.

Given the precarious conditions of such emblematic and endangered species, environmental clearances in protected areas -- such as permissions to disrupt parks for new mining or infrastructure projects -- are a serious affair.

India's current government seems determined to advance 'development' at all costs. But will diminishing the nation's critical wildlife areas -- which have already suffered greatly -- bring the kind of development that India really needs?

ALERT member Jean-Philippe Puyravaud shares with us his views on tiger populations in India. Once the dominant predator across much of Asia, the tiger today survives in just a tiny fraction of its former geographic range -- and with just a tiny fraction of its former numbers.

This excellent result could be attributed to the interest and commitment of the people of India towards their natural heritage, the protection provided by the Forest Department, the efforts of scientists, and the enormous contribution of conservation organizations.

These findings should be celebrated and emulated in richer countries who talk about eradicating wolves -- such as Canada -- or decommissioning nature reserves -- such as Australia.

The finding that tigers have evidently increased has sparked a lot of reaction. Journalists have celebrated the fact that the tiger is “saved”. On the basis of the good news, the pro-development Government of India has wasted little time while proposing to build four-lane highways through several tiger reserves.

But is the tiger in India really safe? To illustrate, I made a graph with 150,000 tigers -- a plausible number -- at the dawn of the Indian Civilization. Ignore the massacres by British trophy hunters and imagine a smooth decrease of the tiger population over the past 3,000 years.

Tiger numbers fell to an all-time low in 2006 and have increased marginally over the past decade. What overall trend do you see?

India's catastrophic decline in tiger numbers

The recent increase in tiger abundance -– in spite of being good news -- is effectively invisible.

I am not a proponent of “repopulating” India with tigers, but what the graph suggests is that unless the tiger population recovers to several thousand individuals, the species is still tremendously vulnerable in India.

And if this is the status of tigers in India -- which sustains seven-tenths of the global population -- how will it fare elsewhere?

We should celebrate the good news that tiger populations in India have made a marginal recovery.

But let's not forget that the species is still staring into the abyss -- the victim of catastrophic declines and not far from global extinction.

The Western Ghats is India's biologically richest and arguably most imperiled ecosystem--not just a global biodiversity hotspot but considered one of the "hottest of the hotspots".

ALERT members Jean-Philippe Puyravaud and Priya Davidar weigh in on a heated debate about the future of these imperiled forests:

A cool mist shrouds one of the hottest of the hotspots (photo by William Laurance)

Glowing reports on how well India’s forests are connected in the Western Ghats come at a time when there is active debate over laws with teeth that could potentially remove human encroachments in highly sensitive areas. But unfortunately the media seem to be saying “all is well” in a very untimely fashion.

Reality is less rosy and the Western Ghats are replete with conservation proposals that never worked.

The Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve is one of these.The reserve lies at the center of the largest populations of Asian elephants and Bengal tigers in the world. Since its inception 30 years ago, it has remained a set of separate reserves—never managed as an integrated whole, as should be the case for Man and Biosphere reserves.There has been no improvement in the management of biodiversity and endangered wildlife, and the contrast between wild habitats and developed areas has never been so stark.

Intense land-use pressures... working with local communities is vital (photo by William Laurance)

In India, concrete, practical solutions are proposed every day without effect. In 1995, for example, Stephen Sumithran proposed a beautiful plan to reconnect the habitats of the endangered Nilgiri tahr that would have tripled its population in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. This plan had no effect on the ground because it was not implemented.

Grandiose schemes in the Western Ghats have only contributed to weakening conservation efforts because they have not been grounded in reality. Their motto seems to be “think globally, don’t act locally”.

Things are heating up in India. ALERT member Priya Davidar and her colleague Jean-Philippe Puyravaud provide this perspective on a key conservation issue there. Their focus is a plan to reconnect fragmented rainforests in the Western Ghats--some of the most biologically important real estate in India.

Prime real estate... rainforests of the Western Ghats (photo by William Laurance)

We congratulate the Karnataka Forest Department for this initiative, but this information has not been made public in India. Where there have been initiatives to add forests to the protected-area network, it is not at the scale indicated in the article. Given the high price of land in India, the suggested plan would cost billions of dollars, far more than the entire budget of India's Ministry of Environment and Forests.

At present, the protected-area “network” in Karnataka is chopped up by highways, pipelines, dams, railroad tracks, and human settlements. Wild elephants are dying there because they can't access water in the dry season. Parks and reserves are under enormous pressure from fuelwood harvesting, cattle grazing, pollution, plant invasion, violent fires, poaching, and unmanaged tourism. In some national parks, the tourism pressure is so high that connectivity within the protected areas themselves is threatened.

Parks under pressure... fuelwood harvesting in India (photo by William Laurance)

The BBC article comes at the same time that a proposed high-tension power line would slice through forests in the heart of the “secure forest network”, from Mysore to Kozhikode. This project would be followed by a four-lane highway and railway line. Funds have been sanctioned for surveys on these projects without considering alternative routes or proper environmental impact assessments.

The bottom line: Optimism about the proposed Karnataka Corridor needs to be tempered with caution. These vital forests are far from secure and there are many challenges ahead.